Posted
by
timothy
on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @12:57AM
from the when-they-meet-it's-a-happy-land dept.

prostoalex writes "Everyone's favoriteKnoppix project will be split into light and maximum editions, which should end the argument on whether the Live CD operating system should focus on small footprint, or greater support for external applications." From the linked ZDNet article:
"'We will split the mainstream edition of Knoppix into two versions: a 'maximum' DVD edition with a complete Debian installation, and a 'light' edition on CD that contains the most popular desktop and server software only, for older computers or smaller systems that don't have a bootable DVD drive yet,' said Knopper."

Knoppix really needs fluxbox. I personally use it on my every day system(an AMD64 gaming machine) but when I am fixing computer at work I find KDE takes forever to load on knoppix, fluxbox would be really nice, and its small.

Where can I find a list of these bootcodes? When I boot Knoppix, and go through the F2, F3, F4 menus, it doesn't list them all, and I have looked around knopper.net/knoppix and www.knoppix.net and haven't found a list of them. Can you reply with a URL for me?

Where can I find a list of these bootcodes? When I boot Knoppix, and go through the F2, F3, F4 menus, it doesn't list them all, and I have looked around knopper.net/knoppix and www.knoppix.net and haven't found a list of them. Can you reply with a URL for me?

Oh, I guess I should mention, I mean a link that works. I found this list, [linuxtag.org] but the link is dead.

I'm curious, will Fluxbox be on this "light" disk? I ask because the summary says that the most 'popular desktop'. That would be KDE, but light it is not!

Pure conjecture, but I expect the light CD would include KDE. I think the light CD will be quite similar to the latest Knoppix release, except with a variety of package updates. The maximum CD should have everything, including the token "kitchen sink"

It all depends upon your definition of an "older computer." Theirs, I think, is still in the P-III range (650 mhz - 1.8 ghz). Mine, however, is completely different. My primary computer is a Celeron 500 and I don't expect to upgrade any time soon. KDE is painful on my system, but other lightweight WM's run flawlessly. I beleive they're leave the "really eh'fin old" computer segment to distros like Damn Small Linux [damnsmalllinux.org] (which, incidentally, is a heavily stripped down version of Knoppix).

Im running my firewall on a 50mhz SuperSPARC. It ran OpenBSD and 2 snort instances. So there. I also run a MacSE (15mhz 68k) as a console to several machines, all less then 300mhz, and Windows 2000 on a P233.

To get back to what started this, I run the latest KDE on a dual P2 350 with 768MB Ram and with 2 VMWare sessions and a bunch of other things running, KDE runs just fine.

The lite edition still has 600MB to work with, and if they don't pack it full, it's not as useful as if they did. KDE would certainly be good to have, and they'll still have plenty of space to install it when they're done.

When I installed everything I might think about using (five window managers, gnome and kde versions of almost everything, etc) on my box compiled with -Os, I got about 3.7GB of programs. I can't wait to see the DVD-DL version of Knoppix. That should be ab

700MB, plus a compresed file system, equals about 1.2GB on the CD. The DVD as far as I can tell will likely use the same compressed file system, allowing for easily 6 if not 8GB of file storage. I can't think of any distribution that has that much stuff installed by default.

I know that Klaus Knopper doesn't see Knoppix as a Debian installer, but I think that he should take a second look at this, especially considering the idea of a "lite" and a "full" version of the Knoppix CD.

The "lite" version of the CD should allow for a simplified HD install, complete with Knoppix' superior hardware detection facility. Neither the official Debian Sarge installer nor the Ubuntu installer is as good as Knoppix for "figuring out" the hardware it's looking at. I don't know about Mepis because I've never used it.

Maybe if Herr Knopper won't do it, someone should fork Knoppix and do it for him.

A point that comes up on slashdot here and there, is where do you draw the line with linux? Whats really the "linux operating system"? kernel + coreutils isn't exactly a wholly useful setup. With windows its a bit more obvious, they give you a bunch of crap when you install it.

I just want to see a definition of "Linux operating system" even if its something variable like "a window manager, a calculator, a web browser, a shell, a kernel etc" just to add some clarification to the whole thing

A point that comes up on slashdot here and there, is where do you draw the line with linux?

I personally draw it at 1 CD.:-)

I have a broadband connection so I don't need massive amounts of software bundled. I don't care much about exactly what software it is, although I prefer if what they choose is fairly popular software. If we have special demands, I'm fine with downloading (gasp! what's that!?) it from the Internet.

I just want to see a definition of "Linux operating system" even if its something variable like "a window manager, a calculator, a web browser, a shell, a kernel etc"

A definition like that is fine for many computers but I'm pretty sure my dedicated ftp server is running an operating system, yet does not have half of the things on your list. If we're talking about an operating system most people will wan't to use on a desktop workstation I'll go along with you even though that leaves CLI fans in the lurch

Microsoft is bitching about how people can't trust code that doesn't belong to them, Homeland security says we can't trust what should be a simple piece of software *by* them...

meanwhile, Knoppix is a wonderful, portable, safe, stable distribution that can go anywhere you do, and is so easy to use that my 87 year old grandmother who is so frial she can't leave her bed (we've had a hospital bed put in her room for her) can literally boot an old laptop (with DOS 6.2 installed) and use it to email and *even instant message* her grandson (me), who is 300km away.

And its free.

If there were *ever* a prime demonstration of what can be accomplished by OSS in action, surely Knoppix is that demonstration.

P.S. I told my grandmother about the microsoft-flaming-firefox thing... she said (and I quote, verbatim)"Someone should tell those... those... those Microstuff people (shes a little poor of hearing) to smarten up or be quiet."

Just over a year ago, I inhereted an old K6-2 450Mhz box with a dead hard drive. As I had an old monitor kicking around, and as I typically hate having guests use any of my workstations, I decided to remove the hard drive and set the system up as a dedicated Knoppix box.

I dutifully downloaded the ISO and burned a CD, only to find that the machine in question had an old CD-ROM drive incapable of reading 700MB discs. So I was SOL (and eventually found Gnoppix [gnoppix.org], which did fit onto a 650MB disc this machine could boot).

I can't imagine I've been the only person to run into this issue with Knoppix, so I wonder if this new "lite" version will be designed to work on 650MB discs (although admittedly I had a bit of a rough time even finding such discs to burn that Gnoppix CD oh so long ago).

(And yes, I suppose I could spend a bit of money and buy a new CD-ROM drive for the machine, but it was a freebie, and is supposed to be a guest machine, so it isn't as if I'm personally hurting by not putting any money into it;) ).

Well, yes. On any Linux. Like, say, on Knoppix, LiveCD (recommended actually). You need quite a bit of free diskspace for that, some 4G as you need the Knoppix ISO (may be created from the boot CD that's already in the drive) in uncompressed version, and 2-3 other CD-size files, plus either a lot of RAM (some 1.2GB?) or pretty big swapfile (the compressing program needs that).

Sure creating the 650M version is not something you do at your grandmother's house when she asked you to fix her PC and her drive su

Get a real CD drive then:) I don't know what were the last drives that didn't run 700M CDs, but I suspect they were like 4x or 8x. I assure you you'll bite your leg off or fall asleep waiting for Knoppix with newest KDE to boot from such a CD.

No, I don't think it is a problem with the CD drive which is capable of overburning, but a problem with old CDRW which apparently do not support this size: they are rated for 650MB, will do 680MB alright but not 700MB..

This would be my #1 request for the lite version as well, more for the reason that I have lots of 650 MB blanks. And when you find a random disk laying around, who knows what size it is? Yes, I know the computer can tell me, but I'd rather not have to worry. Just scrape off a few packages and we'll all be happy.:-)

Unless there's a canned one out there, it looks like I'm going to have to roll my own "ultralight" CD to give away to people still running mid-90s hardware: 16-64MB RAM, 500MB-1GB HD, 2-4x CD if you are lucky, 14.4-33.6 modem if you are lucky, ISA or early-PCI sound card and video

There are several - I usually go to http://www.linux.org/dist/index.html [linux.org] and select the "LiveCD" Category. This suggests a range of options, each with different advantages. I try out a new one every few months, just to get some variety.

One I tried recently, which is close to your needs is FeatherLinux (http://featherlinux.berlios.de/ [berlios.de]). I'm not sure about XL/Powerpoint in the default install, but it can install OpenOffice if you wish.

Damn Small Linux [damnsmalllinux.org] would run well on a system with those specs, but doesn't include the software you want. Check it out and see if you can modify it to suit your needs... It's worth a spin, and not that large a download. At any rate it has VNC so you could use it as a thin client.

I have a PC like that, and I can tell you: the one thing that's not going to work is the web browser. There just aren't any good, graphical web browsers that will run on such hardware.

The closest two are probably Konqueror and Dillo, with Konqueror being a bit too heavy and Dillo lacking too many features. You can also try Netscape 4, though I have had a hard time finding a stable version.

For the rest, you can run Linux, X, a light window manager like icewm or windowmaker, xmms, some games (freeciv), abiw

Fact: FireFox is slow and bloated. It takes about 35 MB of main memory, so don't even think about loading it on systems with less than 64 MB of RAM. Even konqueror doesn't take more memory and renders pages at least twice as fast.

Morphix, [morphix.org] which is what I've been basically using as "Knoppix-Lite," and it does the trick for me. I use the Light-GUI iso, which is about 200MB. It's basically a modular Knoppix (it is, in fact, based on Knoppix). You can also roll your own. Say, if you don't need the GUI module, you can opt for other modules. Pretty neat.

Been there, tried that, abandonned in favour of standard Knoppix. The problem with Morphix is the "modules" are pretty rigid structures, not quite easy to customize. Yes, you can "roll your own", like with everything open source. But plain "remastering" of vanilla Knoppix is much easier than building Morphix modules.

Remastering Knoppix CDs is doable. If any of the standard Knoppix live cds don't meet your needs you can customize one of your own. Ce
cil Watson will giving a talk at the [socallinuxexpo.org] Southern California Linux Expo [socallinuxexpo.org] (SCALE 3x) in February about how to go about doing this. Cecil is maintainer
of KnoppMyth, a Knoppix distribution customized for use as a Linux based PVR with MythTV.

I've been playing around with remastering Knoppix on and off for the last week or so... I've had the best luck with the instructions in this forum post [knoppix.net]. It's a lot easier than the wiki instructions, and it's current. YMMV.

...But I, for one, do not have a DVD burner. It was a choice I made, as I thought, "When will I ever need to burn a DVD?" I think it will be hard to overcome this problem until a few years down the road, when DVD burners and DVD burning software (is there any for linux?) have become as commonplace as CD burning is today, not to mention a reduction in blank media prices.

I don't know if it's me, but I can never seem to find an FTP site that lets me DL a copy of Knoppix at a speed better than 2-5 Kb/s -- this, on a cable modem! Does anyone else have this problem? The only reason I haven't already given up on FTP and switched to BitTorrent is that our home LAN is on a router that from time to time will flake out under load...

Being a regular knoppix user I have seen them make some ridiculous decisions to save space on the CD.For example...not installing an English dictionary for the spellchecker in mozilla, but including a full suite of games and 4 text editors.

You might want to download and actually give it a try. It doesn't touch the HD at all, making it perfect for data recovery or situations where you don't have permission to use the drive for personal use. It gives you a complete set of applications and leaves no residue on the system.

Okay, and can I force it i.e. to use swapfile while swap partition is present?Say, I hibernate my native OS to the swap partition, then want to boot Knoppix. If it tries to use the swap partition it will corrupt the "hibernation" image, but the native memory may be not enough to boot the GUI...?

Knoppix is amazingly useful as a resuce resource. I can't always carry everything that I'd like with me when I might encounter a computer in need of repair. With a Knoppix CD on hand I have a great set of tools that can help to diagnose and repair many problems.

This reminds me of my first year of college, studying Computing as one of my subjects. Now my teacher for this was Welsh, and had absolutely no clue about anything not contained within the pages of his hideously out-of-date textbook. He even forced us to learn Pascal when there was C/C++ availible as a 'preferred equivalent' in the curriculum. One long year of being baby-walked through coding and compiling command-line apps with Borland TurboPascal 5.5 for Windows. Sheer Hell. So after wasting countless hou

As others have said, you can boot Knoppix without it touching the hard drive (or even in a computer without one I assume), and in fact that's the default configuration. It is possible to tell it about a swap partition (or file I think), but it's unnecessary.

Any drives you have aren't even mounted at boot, though they do get desktop icons. Clicking them mounts the drive for use. (I forget about defaults regarding read vs. read/write; I think using the icons just gives you readonly.)

I had the same thoughts as yourself on Live CDs until recently, when a friend of mine showed me what he uses Live CDs for. He codes on the side from his real job. When he's on a plane/etc, He takes his work laptop and boots an Ubuntu Live CD, and does his coding there, basically in a demo environment, where he can go ahead and email it to himself at home, save it to a personal usb drive, etc, all with it techincally never touching his emplyer's hard drive. This could be one of the few reasonable uses oth

We will split the mainstream edition of Knoppix into two versions: a 'maximum' DVD edition with a complete Debian installation, and a 'light' edition on CD that contains the most popular desktop and server software only, for older computers or smaller systems that don't have a bootable DVD drive yet

Step 3: Try to find mods who also read the article summaries before modding people up.

Yeah, I read the article, I just don't happen to think that the "light" version will be all that impressive for someone who has never seen linux before. One of the selling points of linux is that most of what you need is included with the distribution, you don't have to spend 2 days installing irfanview, mozilla, and 2 petabytes of MS service packs.
What a condescending asshole. I'll bet you sound just like the comic book guy from the Simpsons.

You've mentioned it twice here.
So burn to a 700Mb CD-R already! I've seen them as cheap as $0.30 Australian (if you buy 100), but in any case, a CD-R is certainly cheap enough to waste if Knoppix doesn't suit you.

this is a great idea i use Knoppix a lot and frequently on old computers but having some additional features on a dvd would be great for higher end systems and simplify carrying a bunch of cds or downloading some utilities"